Background
In desperation, a group of women—workers in Confederate ordnance establishments and the wives of the Tredegar Iron Works laborers—met on April 1, 1863, at the Belvidere Hill Baptist Church located in the Oregon Hill neighborhood of the city. Led by Mary Jackson and Minerva Meredith, the women resolved to gather at Capitol Square the next day to seek a meeting with Virginia governor John L. Letcher to discuss their plight.
The Riot
Curious onlookers, such as Confederate War Department clerk J. B. Jones, asked some in the group what they were doing. Several eyewitnesses reported seeing a gaunt woman raise a skeleton of an arm and scream, "We celebrate our right to live! We are starving!" Others heard a chant of "Bread or blood!" The mob then began attacking government warehouses, grocery stores, and various mercantile establishments, seizing food, clothing, and wagons, as well as jewelry and other luxury goods. Some merchants resisted the rioters while others watched helplessly as the looters seized bacon, ham, flour, and shoes.
Mayor Joseph Mayo quickly arrived at Mayo Street (the street was not named for the mayor), where he literally read the Riot Act to the mob; he was ignored. Letcher appeared shortly thereafter, as did Confederate president Jefferson Davis. Again, accounts of who summoned the City Battalion and who threatened the mob with violence differ. Varina Davis wrote in her memoir of her husband that he pleaded with the rioters to disperse and then threatened to have an artillery unit open fire on the mob. Others assert it was Letcher who ordered city forces to fire on the group if it did not disperse in five minutes.
Tense moments passed, but the crowd did scatter. Local officials carried through with their threat to post cannon on key thoroughfares. That factor served to discourage another group that gathered on April 3, 1863. Fears of further disturbances led the commander of the Department of Richmond to order troops to augment forces under the provost marshal.
Aftermath
More than sixty men and women were arrested and tried in connection with the riot. Fines and prison terms were meted out, apparently in a rather capricious way. Those who appeared at their trials better dressed and perhaps more contrite received lesser punishments than others who were obviously members of the working class or the ringleaders of the mob.
The city fathers of Richmond also moved in the aftermath of the riot to insure there was no further breakdown of public order. The city had a long tradition of poor relief and the City Council resolved to expand its efforts in that area. Richmond's lawmakers were quick to distinguish between the "worthy poor," those who did not participate in the riot, and the "unworthy poor," those who did. Soon the city would operate special markets where the "meritorious poor" could obtain provisions and fuel at significantly reduced prices.
The bread riot in Richmond was not an isolated affair. People in the Confederate capital would read about similar revolts in Atlanta, Augusta, Columbus, and Macon, Georgia; in Salisbury and High Point, North Carolina; and in Mobile, Alabama. Local officials in those cities tackled the problem of poor relief in much the same way. But the stark reality was that people could not afford to buy food because prices in 1863 were almost ten times higher than they were in 1861. As one scholar has noted, a nation of farmers was, indeed, going hungry.
The situation would only grow worse as the Confederate transportation network broke down and as Union armies occupied more and more of the Confederacy's arable land. The bread riots of 1863 underscored how desperate the situation had become on the home front. They also highlighted the slow but steady demoralization that profoundly affected the Confederate cause.
Time Line
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April 1, 1863 - A group of women—workers in Confederate ordnance establishments and the wives of the Tredegar ironworks laborers—meet at the Belvidere Hill Baptist Church in the Oregon Hill neighborhood of Richmond to discuss food and fuel shortages. They resolve to seek a meeting with Governor John L. Letcher.
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April 2, 1863 - Denied a meeting with Governor John Letcher, a group of Richmond women begin looting shops downtown to protest insufficient food, initiating what came to be known as the Bread Riot. One account claims Letcher calls out the Home Guard and threatens to have the women shot unless they disperse.
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April 3, 1863 - For the second straight day, a group of Richmonders gathers to protest food shortages, but is discouraged from rioting. The previous day, the City Battalion had threatened violence against protesters.
References
Further Reading
Cite This Entry
- APA Citation:
DeCredico, M. Richmond Bread Riot. (2012, February 10). In Encyclopedia Virginia. Retrieved from http://www.EncyclopediaVirginia.org/Bread_Riot_Richmond.
- MLA Citation:
DeCredico, Mary. "Richmond Bread Riot." Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Humanities, 10 Feb. 2012. Web. READ_DATE.
First published: May 8, 2009 | Last modified: February 10, 2012
Contributed by Mary DeCredico, a professor of history at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.